Antikythera mechanism

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens was a bit of a disappointment. This holds important artefacts from ancient Greece, but perhaps too many. Any one room of the museum could justify a whole museum in its own right. As a result the impact of individual items is lessened by their quantity. But feeling like I has seen enough old marble I was caught up short by a small corroded piece of metal in a small case. This was the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical calculator, far more complex than an astrolabe and possibly designed by Archimedes.

Some months ago I attended a talk where the speaker claimed, not completely seriously, how modifications to the design of the Antikythera mechanism were identifiable in the mechanism and these were the world's first known "software upgrade". Seeing the real thing was very exciting.

New Acropolis Museum

This week ABC TV is featuring the New Acropolis Museum (Greece - Losing their Marbles , Foreign Correspondent, Reporter: Helen Vatsikopoulos, 07/10/2008). Earlier in the year I visited the museum , when only the foyer was open and the exhibits were stacked in crates. The building reminded me of Parliament House Canberra. There is a risk the scale of the building will overwhelm the exhibits.

The building is conveniently located near a metro station at the base of the Acropolis. It is built on concrete columns over an archaeological site, discovered during construction. Glass panels in the floor outside and in the foyer of the building allow the site to be viewed beneath your feet. This can be a little disconcerting. More seriously, the steel mesh in the floor at the front door is open to the site below, so that dirt and debris will fall down and contaminate the site.

The building foyer has good circulation space, but the lack of facilities such as toilets may be a problem. The grandeur of the entrance is spoilt somewhat by a row of ticket turnstiles, making it look like a metro station. In fact some of Athens metro stations look more like museums than the museum does, with materials discovered during metro construction on display.

While large, the building is not overly lavish. There is good use of modern materials in a stripped classicism style, including suggestions of Greek columns in modern material. The building is basically a rectangular box with a smaller glass box on top, rotated about 15 degrees.

When filled with antiquities, the space should work well. But I would have preferred something less grand, such as the more modest, but well proportioned Delphi Museum. Rather than one big building, the resources could have been spent in improving archaeological exhibits accross Greece and in particular on the Acropolis itself. What is needed is better interpretation of the material, particularly using computer based displays.

Camping in the Middle of Sydney Harbour

The worlds greatest tourist bargain is available until early September in Sydney. The Biennale of Sydney is an art festival held at venues around the city. One venue is Cockatoo Island, in Sydney harbour.

The vintage ferry "RADAR" (which looks like something out of "Thomas The Tank Engine") takes you on a free harbour cruse past the Sydney Opera House, to the island for the free art display. The art is in the historic former convict settlement and Australian Navy shipyards. There are also camping facilities on the island, with views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The art on display is not that good, overwhelmed by the craft art of the buildings and their machinery. However, the site is worth a visit if only to see the harbour from a new vantage point.

For the first time, this year the Biennale takes over Cockatoo Island – the largest island in Sydney Harbour and Australia’s most unusual urban park. A former prison and shipyard, Cockatoo retains many remnants of its past. Its prison buildings have been nominated for World Heritage listing, along with other convict sites around Australia. For this year’s Biennale, 35 artists are utilising buildings and sites across the island. Spend a few hours exploring the exhibition at this wonderful location. A free ferry service leaves hourly every day between 9.45 am and 4.45 pm from the Commissioners Steps outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and from Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay. This shuttle service will also return from the island. Last departure 5.15 pm. ...

The Hollowmen Solid

The ABC TV's new satire "The Hollowmen" got off to a solid, but not that funny start. The series is about a fictional policy development unit in parliament house, working for the prime minister. This is Australia's equivalent of "Yes Minister", if not "The West Wing". The first episode was about development of a policy on obesity. The prime minister first announced that the government was going to do something and then the policy people had to quickly respond to give the impression there was a policy.

The point of view expressed in the show is much the same as Frontline, produced by the same crew and with some of the same actors: there are those who are cynically manipulating the system with no interest except what helps them, there are those who are largely clueless as to what is happening but have the communication skills to make it appear they know, and there are experts who care and do know what to do but are kept from doing it by their lack of ability to manipulate the system.

The show explores the power relationship between the people in Parliament House: the politicians, the party staff, advisers, media, lobbyists and public servants. The message seemed to be that the only way to stay in political power is to spend your time trying to stay in power, with the result you actually have little real power.

As a former public servant I have been on the edge of this process, having very occasionally visited parliament house and a few times having to be involved with ministers offices. My experience was not that shown in the show: the people working there were sincere and did concern themselves with the public good. They did take advice from public servants. But they did have to balance this against political issues. The public servants did have a high level of frustration, but were not as naive as portrayed in the show.

Later as an ex-public servant I have been involved in the political process, helping with policy on ICT and the internet. What I found most heartening, was when an issue was the politicians were willing to work together across party lines in the public interest. They genuinely wanted to know what to do. But they then needed to temper that with what would be politically and publicly acceptable.

One activity I was involved in with which might be seen as a cynical political exercise was the 2020 summit. The critics called this a talk fest, which it was, but was still of some use.

The level of cynicism expressed in the show kept me from enjoying much of the humor. I found the plot with the manipulation of an important public health hard to believe. However, I then heard a real news report about the opposition's policy on climate change, which is that they support carbon trading but not if it increases the price of petrol. Given that the purpose of carbon trading is to reduce carbon emissions from sources such as petrol by using price signals, this makes no sense in the real world. However, in the political world a policy which would cause the deaths of millions of people in the long term makes sense if it temporarily fools the voters into thinking you are doing something.

What will likely save the show is the level of authenticity: the sets look like the corridors and meeting rooms of the real parliament house. The characters look and sound like the people working there, to the point where at a casual glance it looks like a documentary. However, this may turn into an inside joke, with only those involved in this process enjoying the joke, at the expense of themselves and their colleagues, with the rest of use just confused as to what it is all about.

ps: Perhaps it is another inside joke, but the web site for the show, demonstrates a cynical disregard for the viewer, having some flashy animation and graphics, with very little actual content. The design of the site is so bad that it probably illegal. If this is intended to be a comment on government web sites, it misses the mark, with the Prime Minister and Cabinet web site being informative and well designed.

High-tech access for heritage sites

While in Greece I noticed that some cultural sites and museums were not opened at the advertised times. According to a recent media report, this is an embarrassment to the Greek government ("Run-down heritage sites embarrass the Greeks", Helena Smith, The Guardian, June 23, 2008). The solution given in the article was longer opening hours and more staff, but I am not sure that is the correct approach.

The sites tend to open early in the morning and close in the afternoon (8am to 3pm). The media article claimed this was due to public servant working hours. But in the hotter months, it makes sense to be outdoors during the cooler early parts of the day. If the outdoor sites were open in the hottest parts of the afternoon, many tourists, particularly those getting off air conditioned cruise ships, would suffer in the heat.

One tip I do have for tourists to Delphi, and similar places in the hotter months, is to tour the outdoor sites as soon as they open in the morning. You usually have an hour of the monuments to yourself between 8 and 9 am, before the tour buses arrive. Then when it starts to get hot, go indoors to the air conditioned museums.

Don't be put off by the gates being closed. At a few sites the staff did not get around to opening until they saw they had some customers. In one case the gates were firmly locked and no staff were about. But after a five minute visit to the adjacent souvenir store, the site was then open (with some of the people who were sitting in the store now on site).

At the excellent Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia at Thrace, there was a sign on the side gate pointing to the front door, and a sign on the front door which said it was closed. Going back to the side door, there appeared to be people in there and having gone in I found the museum open with several staff waiting to assist. One staff member then went around turning on video introductions and interactive displays. On exiting I noticed the sign on the side gate had been changed to say to enter there.

More use could be made of computers and technology at major Greek cultural sites. In particular the Athens Acropolis needs something to stop it crumbling under the feet of thousands of tourists and to give them better access. Even the path marked for disabled users is made of slippery and uneven marble, polished smooth by many feet.

People Movers for the Acropolis

One solution for the Acropolis would be to install small automatic people movers. These would be a high tech version of the tourist trains commonly used to ferry tourists around the streets. In place of the noisy diesel engine they would have electric power. The units could run on a safe low voltage electric track, or be battery powered on rubber tires, or a combination of both.

This would require minimal alteration to the site and cause far less damage than have tourists wandering everywhere. Staff costs would be reduced and the individual cars could be equipped with commentary in different languages. Using computer control each car could be individually controlled, so that tourists would not have to wait for a whole train to be full.

Web Displays for Greek Museums

Another useful feature would be to provide more computer based displays for the museums. This would allow for more languages to be provided. The Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia had an excellent display of the history of the pot in greece, but all of the captions were only in Greek. The information could also be placed on the web for information. The Hellenic Ministry of Culture has attempted to provide details of museums on their web site. But this is a very large task. Being able to use the same information in the museum and on the web would make the task much easier. The Wikipedia has also attempted to catalog Greek museums, and it might make sense to combine the two efforts.

Online information for museums could be downloaded into the visitor's mobile phone. Existing web based services could translate the captions into any of dozens of languages and the result could even be turned into an audio commentary automatically. These are all features which major museums already have, but are prohibitively expensive to develop for every display in minor museums. However, free web based services can now be used to provide it if the museum information is on the web.

Cafes at Museums

One surprising lack in most Greek museums and monumental sites site is a cafe. Apart from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens
which has a cafe with a courtyard which is a work of art in itself and the Delphi Archaeological Museum with an outdoor cafe, most Greek museums do not have cafes. The traditional approach seems to be to have the cafes outside the gate. However, better integration might help keep the sites open longer and cover the costs.

Museum of Technology and Islam Opened in Istanbul

Walking through Gülhane Park in İstanbul today, I noticed a sign announcing the opening of the "Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam". I stuck my head in the door and met Dr. Detlev Quintern from Bremen University. The Islamic Science and Technology Historical Museum was opened Saturday by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The museum is in what were the Imperial Stables in Gülhane Park in the gardens next to Topkapı Palace. The museum will be opne 9 am to 4pm. It has technological and scientific works by Islamic scholars and is by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA), the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Frankfurt Goethe University (Germany).

There are three buildings along the edge of the park making up the new museum, with three and a half thousand square meters of display and research offices. There is also a Library of History of Science in the complex.

Currently there are only 140 items on display, but this is planned to be expanded to 800. The museum has replicas of inventions by Muslim scientists between the 8th and 16th centuries, from astronomy, geography, chemistry, surveying, optics, medicine, architecture, physics and warfare.

National Folk Festival

Greetings from the National Folk Festival in Canberra. The National Library of Australia is providing an internet cafe and WiFi alongside the union concert (with Senator Lundy comparing). Apart from the music there are displays with an ecological theme. One was from ANZSES with solar energy displays.

One of the more unusual acts, is the House Howlers, an a cappella singing group made up of journalists from the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, including Karen Middleton. They sing satirical songs about politicians.

Copyright and the Internet Archive, Canberra, 3 April 2008

Matthew Rimmer will be giving a free talk in Canberra, 3 April 2008, in the National Library's Digital Culture talk series on copyright law and the Internet Archive . Recommended:

Back to the future: copyright law, Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine

Dr Matthew Rimmer

Internet Archive provides free 'universal access to human knowledge' to researchers, historians, scholars and the general public. Their delightfully named Wayback Machine provides access to websites that have been significantly altered or may no longer exist. Notwithstanding this altruistic endeavour, Internet Archive has been embroiled in a number of policy debates over copyright law over the extension of copyright term, 'orphan' works, take-down notices, digital locks and large-scale digitisation projects. The Internet Archive has also been involved in litigation as a plaintiff, a defendant, and an amicus curiae (a friend of the court). In the light of such policy debate and litigation, there is a need to reform digital copyright laws so that digital libraries such as Internet Archive can flourish - without fear of disruption from copyright owners.

Dr Matthew Rimmer is a senior lecturer and the director of Higher Degree Research at the ANU College of Law, and an associate director of the Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture (ACIPA). He holds a BA (Hons) and a University Medal in literature, and a LLB (Hons) from the Australian National University, and a PhD in law from the University of New South Wales. Rimmer is a member of the Copyright and Intellectual Property Advisory Group of the Australian Library and Information Association, and a director of the Australian Digital Alliance.

Dr Rimmer will be introduced by Laura Simes, Copyright Advisor, National Library of Australia

Date: Thursday 3 April 2008
Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Venue: Library Theatre
This talk is free and open to everyone.

Bobby Graham
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
Tel: +61 2 6262 1542
www.nla.gov.au

Bollywood History of Modern India

Looking for something to read for the holidays, I came across "Bollywood - A History" by Mihir Bose. This is really a history of the Indian film industry, which, as the Wikipedia points out, is more than Bollywood. In part it is also a history of modern India, its suffering under British rule and US cultural influence.

Bose points out that a film was shown in India only seven months after the first one was shown in Paris by the Lumiere brothers in Paris on 28 December 1895. He relates how Maurice Sestier, on his way from Paris to Australia to promote cinema, stopped over at Bombay and put on a showing at 6 pm 7 July 1896. Another Australian connection is the actress Mary Ann Evans from Perth, Western Australia made films in India in the 1930s, under the name "Fearless Nadia".

I had my own Bollywood experience when, shorty after arriving in Goa I sat down on the dais next to the mother superior of the local convent school on prize day. One of the students doing the MCing announced "... and now a traditional dance from the people of ..." and several hundred students broke out into a Bollywood dance routine. On the same trip I a ttended the Goa Documentary Film Festival, where the guest of honor was "Gulzar", noted India film maker, who is mentioned several times by Bose.

Also the reliance of traditional Indian performance to Bollywood film was explained by Bose. The films derive their format from live performances which combine acting, music, drama and comedy. At the village level and at the state cultural center I attended live performances of this type.

Bollywood (Hindi: बॉलीवुड, Urdu: بالی وڈ) is the informal term popularly used for Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry in India. Bollywood is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film industry. Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in the world, producing more than 1,000 films a year,^[1] with ticket sales of 3.6 billion.^[2]

The name is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a real physical place. Though some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. ...

From: Bollywood, Wikipedia

ps: Check your copy of the book to make sure all the pages are there. The copy I read was missing pages 17 and 24.

See also:

• Bollywood Books
• Arts & Photography
• Biographies & Memoirs
• Business & Investing
• Cooking and Food
• Entertainment
• History
• Literature & Fiction
• Reference
• Travel
• Bollywood DVDs
• Music
• MP3 Downloads
• MP3 Albums
• MP3 Songs

Song downloads selling in France

For Australia Day 2007 I created Amazon store of books about Australia and by Australians in French and Australians in German. I sent a list to the Australian Embassy in Paris and Berlin. These books have sold reasonably well, such as Arthur Upfield's Du crime au bourreau. But what has been more popular are travel DVD's such as Faut pas rêver : L'Australie. La grande traversée. Also recently individual music downloads have become popular, particularly AC/DC's Back in Black, Blow Up Your Video and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I wonder what impression this gives of Australia, with 1930s views of racial relations outback Australia in the Upfield books and 1970s rock music from AC/DC. ;-)
.

ABC Second Life island not attacked

According to Abigail Thomas, Head of Strategic Innovation & Development, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the ABC island in Second Life was not damaged due to a cyber attack, as previously reported. There was a server error which caused problems with the site.

Abigail mentioned this at the start of her talk on "Technology and Media in 2020" at the National Library of Australia today.

One of the points she made that many of the new hot web applications sound very "lame" and uninteresting when described. You need to try the application and its social aspects to understand the impact. An example is Twitter.

Abigail pointed out that many of the examples of "new" web applications are not new at all. They existed on the Internet, but were only used by a few geeks before they had a slick web interface.

Some other interesting points were:

* Artificial intelligence will be used on-line.
* User generated content in real time and geo tagging,
* Your on-line activities will be recorded in your "life log",
* Each person will have multiple identities in different on-line worlds to preserve their privacy.

The questions were:

* How do we make money out of this?: How are the content creators compensated for their work, if all the content free and DIY? Abigail's answer was to work out how to integrate professional and user generated content. But it sounded like she was just going to let us rearrange the content from the ABC a little.

* How are professional journalists coping with integration of TV, radio and print: ABC staff now think about what they want to produce first, and the format (TV, radio, web).

* Tell us about ABC's second life island: Was an experiment. Started with an Four Corners program on TV and in second life, with discussion afterwards. Volunteers oversee DIY construction on part of the island.

But there will be some limitations to the future. One image of a phone shown on screen had on the bottom: "Available color: Jet black". While technology may expand our horizons, fashion will still dictate that black is the new black.

Digital Culture - Technology and Media in 2020

Recommended:

Digital Culture Talk
National Library of Australia

Technology and Media in 2020
Speaker: Abigail Thomas

Time: 12.30 to 13.30
Date: Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Venue: Library Theatre, NLA
Entry: Free

• What will media and technology look like in 2020?
• Do the seeds lie in current trends like the desire for user generated content, creativity, always-on connections and on-demand content?
• Or should we look to science fiction to help us predict the future?
  

Biographical details: Abigail Thomas, Head, Strategic Innovation & Development, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Abigail Thomas has nine years’ experience within the digital and new media environment in the UK and Australia.

In her current role in the ABC’s new Innovation Division, Abigail is responsible for strategic research and development and the creation of innovative projects across the ABC which utilise new media platforms and technologies. This includes interactive television, video downloads and virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Abigail joined the ABC in 2000 and has had a number of different roles including responsibility for project managing the launch of ABC2, the ABC’s digital multichannel, overseeing audience and industry research in the new media space as well as providing policy and strategic advice on corporate issues.

Abigail also worked in the UK for the Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport as Head of Commercial and Digital Broadcasting, with responsibility for government policy on the development of digital broadcasting, at a time when digital TV had just been launched in the UK. Prior to that she undertook a visiting research fellowship for the UK Government, researching digital TV developments in a number of countries (UK, Europe, US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan) and comparing government, industry and academic perspectives on the future implications of digital broadcasting and its regulation.

Bobby Graham
BGRAHAM(a)la.gov.au
Web Content Manager
Web Publishing Branch, IT Division
National Library of Australia
Tel: +61 2 6262 1542
www.nla.gov.au

Previous talks in the Series:

• Second Life, 14 February 2007
• E-publishing in Australian Universities, 27 November 2006

Corporate social networking with web 2.0?

The IT business media seem to be taking Web 2 seriously, so perhaps it is time to look at it. But there seem to be several concepts mixed up together (or perhaps "mashed up"?). Sorting this out may solve some problems in corporate document management and academic publishing.

One is the use of AJAX and similar technology to provide a more interactive interface via the web. Another is traditional office applications provided via the AJAX interface (such as word processors and spreadsheets). The third is on-line meeting places, such as MySpace.

There is also YouTube, a video sharing web site, which usually gets mentioned in the same articles but does not seem to have anything to do with social networking or corporate applications, but just gets included because it is popular.

Capitalizing on Interactivity, Mobility and Personalization by Donna Bogatin, January 22nd, 2007:

Categories: Business Models, Web 2.0, Culture, Google, Blogs, User-Generated Content, MySpace, Social Web, Amateur Content, Self-Promotion, Google Software Applications, Social Networking, Social Media

Is MySpace coming to the enterprise? According to Business Week it is.

On what does Steve Hamm base his assertion? IBM's announcement today of “Lotus Connections.”

IBM describes its offering as “the industry's first platform for business-grade social computing”:

Lotus Connections facilitates the gathering and exchange of information through professional networks, provides a dashboard-like view of current projects and connects users to like-minded communities. In addition, Lotus Connections removes the need for multiple social software applications, providing businesses with a single destination for building professional communities. ...

Corporate social networking is name of game with Lotus Connections, By Stan Beer, 24 January 2007 :

While Microsoft has been trying to win Web 2.0 corporate hearts and minds with Sharepoint Server, IBM threatens to steal the show with a new corporate tested offering called Lotus Connections. Web 2.0 in the consumer space is all about social networking as exemplified by sites such as MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook. Users of these sites with common interests can network, share ideas and provide each other with information that builds upon their mutual knowledge base.

The idea of using more interactive web applications makes sense in the corporate environment, provided you have the bandwidth and processing power to do it and accept its limitations. In some ways this is a step back to centralized mainframe computing, with the web application running on the server. If the central application stops, no one can do any work. This would be a good way to go if you have a new application to introduce across a wide network.

The extreme case seems to be to run your corporate service on someone else's web server. Google have a service called "Google Apps for Your Domain" which provides online tools for email, instant messaging and shared calendar. The idea is that the same tools used for Google's Gmail and others are available for use by companies, educational institutions and other organisations. They use the Google system in place of their own in-house software.

Google are not charging for these services, but presumably are doing it to make people more familiar with Google's services which have advertising on them:

Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer private-labeled email, instant messaging and calendar accounts to all of your users, so they can share ideas and work more effectively. These services are all unified by the start page, a unique, dynamic page where your users can preview their inboxes and calendars, browse content and links that you choose, search the web, and further customize the page to their liking. You can also design and publish web pages for your domain.

I remain a bit skeptical of online meeting places as a business tool. Any form of collaboration requires skills from the participants. Not everyone has these skills and corporations will need to invest in training and staff to make them work. As well as cooperation, workplace involve competition. Perhaps rather than a social network, an information market would be a better model for the on-line workplace. Also much social networking takes place outside the organisation.

Are companies prepared to formalize and document online the process by which their staff trade information with other organisations? In many cases these contacts take place verbally and informally, while tacitly endorsed by superiors. If the contacts took place via a computer system, all transactions would be recorded and could be used in evidence in court. Much of these contacts would be considered unethical or illegal, limiting the scope for using a formal system.

What has this to do with corporate document management or academic publishing? Organisations, particularly governments, are having difficulty with staff filing electronic documents properly. Academia are having difficulty over the role of academic publishing. In both these cases the problem is that the records manager or librarian sees the document or publication as an end in itself.

But the office worker or academic author sees them just as part of a process; a byproduct of doing some work or some research. By incorporating the social network process in the system used to produce the document, keeping good records or publications will be a natural by product of the work. This is more than just an automated work flow which prompts you for some keywords before you can save a document.